There are a few types of stories I try not to miss -- baseball players in drag, pets who have miraculously found their way home after natural disasters -- but the best story of all is the one where a Philadelphia sports fan is acting like a butthole and gets hit or shocked or shot with something.

I guess the Sabers and Senators have some kind of intense rivalry, because even as physical as hockey is, you usually don't see one player bite another, as Jarkko Ruutu -- if that is his real name -- did to Andrew Peters's hand last night.

There's not a whole lot I can say about yesterday's Winter Classic between the Penguins and Sabres that isn't better said somewhere else, so I'll just tip my hat to the NHL for for its pretty awesome marketing ploy, to the Pens and Sabes for playing a hell of a game, to Sidney Crosby for being better at hockey than anyone else alive, and to the city of Buffalo for being a crappy place to live in the winter, because all that snow looks great on TV.

In what seems like an extraordinarily bad idea, the Buffalo Sabres will host the Pittsburgh Penguins in an outdoor game at Ralph Wilson Stadium on January 1st:[Sam] Flood, NBC’s coordinating producer for hockey, already is dreaming of the visuals that could be conjured at the NHL Winter Classic.

As you certainly know from With Leather's extensive, non-stop NHL coverage, the Senators missed their chance to sweep the Sabres in the Eastern Conference finals last night, falling 3-2 on their Canadian home ice.